1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of encoding digital data of arbitrary data rates of at least one data signal for jointly transmitting the encoded data with a digital picture signal, and to a digital data encoder for encoding such data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Together with analog television signals, additional data are transmitted for different purposes. These data may be, for example, teletext data which are transmitted in given picture lines of the television signal. These days, for example, data bits for signalizing the format of the television signal (4:3 or 16:9) are additionally transmitted. Internationally, different data formats are transmitted at different data rates and different bandwidths in predetermined picture lines of the television signal.
There may be a desire to insert such data, which are not normally present in a picture signal, into such a signal so as to apply them, for example, to a digital encoder which converts the digital picture signal into an analog picture signal. For this purpose, the laws in the analog world relating to bandwidth limitation, signal shapes, clocks, etc., are to be adhered to after conversion of the data signal into an analog signal. However, these laws may be different for the different types of data.
Known data encoders provided for this purpose have with the problem that they are not switchable to different data rates and data formats. Consequently, individual data encoders must be provided for the different data formats. A multitude of data encoders must therefore be provided for data signals of different formats to be possibly inserted into a digital picture signal.